Linux is struggling on the desktop because it only has a small number of "great" apps, according to the Gnome co-creator. Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the Gnome desktop, told tech journalist Tim Anderson at the recent Windows 8 Build conference "When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10," de Icaza said, according to a post on Anderson's IT Writing blog. "You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We've managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time."

I agree with Miguel, he's 100% on the spot about this, as usual. I can probably name 10 really good GUI Linux apps, but then it starts getting difficult (and I used to run the original Gnomefiles.org, so I've tried lots of such apps). Even apps that might be seen as more "revolutionary" than Win/Mac apps, these are usually not ready for the prime time (crash too easily).

I'd say that my favorite GUI Linux app at this moment is Blender 2.5x. Not quite there yet for tracking and other movie-related CGI work, but for stand-alone animations it beats many commercial offerings with its new streamlined UI.

Second app would probably be GIMP, despite its usability problems. Still no actual good video editor though, after 10 years of looking (and yes, I've tried them all): crashy, slow, missing features, buggy codecs, terrible usability. Just bad.